BCT Editorial – 5/14/08

This page was last updated on May 15, 2008.

Classic politics; Editorial; Beaver County Times; May 14, 2008.

The editorial subtitle is “Stalemate over indoor smoking ban is a perfect example of what is wrong in Harrisburg.”

Is it my imagination, or does every time the Times not get its way it’s “a perfect examples of what is wrong” in/with ________?

This is at least the 36^th anti-smoking on private property editorial since March 2005, and the 11^th in the last four months. There have been so many the Times is recycling editorial titles. The previous 35 editorials were “Momentum,” “Banned in Beaver,” “Get used to it,” “Trendy #1,” “Trendy #2,” “Straggling behind,” “Salutes & Boots,” “Smoked out #1,” “Smoked out #2,” “Smoked out #3,” “Smoke free,” “Survey says smoking ban popular,” “Inertia,” “Doing harm,” “Smokey state,” “Quit stalling,” “Snuffed out,” “Cleaning the air,” “Keeping up,” “Smoking ban,” “Life and death,” “Poor excuses,” “Banned,” “Smoky City,” “No more delays,” “Haunting fear,” “Sad state,” “Fear factor,” “Pay up,” “Banned in Bristol,” “Escape artists,” “Lapped,” “The right thing,” “No joke,” and “Different drummer.” As it has in some previous editorials, this one goes with the “but they did it” approach.

Maybe it’s just me, but if I were writing an editorial to convince readers to agree with my position, I wouldn’t use “Trendy” as the title. To me, it conveys messages of smoke (no pun intended) blowing in the wind and/or being a slave to fashionable positions. Also, note how these editorials frequently engage in name-calling, as did this one.

Though “Snuffed out” conceded the Times is calling for a smoking ban in private spaces (bars, clubs, restaurants, etc.), the Times reverted to form in “Cleaning the air” and is back to referring to private property as “public spaces.”

I wish someone would explain the real reason behind the crusade against smoking on private property. As I’ve detailed in previous critiques, the reasons cited by the aforementioned editorials don’t hold up under scrutiny. Could it be “the camel’s nose under the tent” strategy to open the door to other nanny government directives? What’s the next “unhealthy behavior” the Times will want to ban? See my critique of “Food fight” to see what I mean. As we already know, the Times is all for laws to ban behavior it simply believes is annoying. When will the Times find a study that asserts getting information from anywhere other than a local newspaper is unhealthy? <g>

As can be expected after 35+ editorials, there’s nothing new of significance in this editorial.